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Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. 
in details, has been in our collection for some years, and was referred to by 
me in the ' Eecords of Albany Museum,' vol. ii, p. 283. It consists of a 
limb bone of some bird with a lump of resin at one end. The bone has 
been marked with incised crosses and transverse lines which perhaps 
originally served as a tally. The resinous lump expands a little distally, 
and on one side presents a moderately deep depression, at the base of which 
is a fragment of hard stone, firmly attached to the resin. This stone cannot 
be removed for examination without injury to the specimen, but is evidently 
of flinty nature. It is presumably the broken base of a much larger stone 
which was formerly mounted in the resin. 
The total length of this specimen is 4 in. Thus it is much too small for 
use as a weapon or baton. It came from the same cave as the first- 
mentioned specimen, and was no doubt used for a similar purpose. It may 
have functioned as the striker of a fire-making apparatus and thus can be 
termed an aboriginal match . Lastly, a piece of resin mounted on a stick was 
found many years ago in a rock shelter at Woest Hill, Grahamstown, along 
with a number of bones. The resin is a cylindric-ovoid lump about 2 in. 
long and f in. thick; it has a deep socket which still contains decayed 
wood. There is, however, no indication that this was used as a mount for a 
stone. It is of interest as additional evidence that the cave-dwelling 
aborigines made use of resin. Mrs. H. M. Barberton informs me that such 
resin was quite familiar to the European settlers under the name of " Bush- 
man resin." It was generally believed that the Bushmen employed this 
material, when available, in the attachment of arrow-heads to the shaft. 
The chief source of the resin seems to be the roots of Pterocelastrus 
variabilis. Thus obtained, it is very brittle, and for cementing purposes 
must be mixed with other substances. 
Again, in association with typical implements of the Bushman type, 
there have been found at several inland localities a few worked stones of 
striking resemblance to fire-flints, though made of local rock. One such 
specimen, of agate, is in the Albany Museum from Barrow Hill, O.F.S. 
(Miss Joan Whitworth), and others from Kimberley have been collected 
by Mr. Jas. Swan and Mr. J. H. Power. But, so far as I know, nothing of 
this kind has been found under circumstances pointing to great antiquity. 
Here it may be added that Sir John Evans, in his work on the ' Ancient 
Stone Implements of Great Britain,' commented on the resemblance between 
the modern " strike-a-lights " and the ancient " scrapers," and came to the 
conclusion that a certain proportion of these latter were in use not for 
scraping hides but for scraping iron pyrites, and not improbably in later 
days even iron or steel for procuring fire. He also cited various instances of 
the occurrence in ancient graves of flint implements in association with 
nodules of iron pyrites — which for the purpose of producing sparks seems to 
be as effective as iron. 
